Metro Offers eBay-Style Online Construction Recycling Marketplace

Metro has a great idea going. In a first-of-its-kind effort in the nation, the Portland metro area’s regional government has created an online marketplace for usable commercial construction materials that have been taken out of a building during renovation or demolition. Need a door? A window? Well, it's only a click away now.

About 20% of the total landfill-bound waste created in our area comes from construction. Metro seeks a regional recycling rate of 64 percent by 2009. Currently it’s at 59 percent. This should help.

Called Boneyard NW, the website replicates the model of such online purveyors as eBay and Craig’s List.

A recent study by Metro of recycling among construction and demolition contractors showed that some of them were recycling materials such as wood, metal and cardboard, but that construction companies often lacked current information about the opportunities for reuse, recycling and the sale and purchase of salvaged materials.

Here are some other interesting facts about construction recycling I gleaned from the Boneyard press release:

Contractors have three types of choices when getting rid of materials: disposal, which costs about $70 per ton; sorting and recycling, at about $30 per ton; and removing salvageable materials to sell them, making money while turning what would have been debris into a product. On a typical 50,000-square foot commercial office renovation project, Metro says contractors could make $10,000-$20,000 off the resale of used building materials, avoiding another $5,000 in disposal costs.

The top ten commercial materials that are easiest to reuse, according to a 2004 Metro survey of building professionals, are:

Every three tons of wood that is reused avoids the creation of 180 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions that would have been created to harvest and mill new lumber. This savings is equivalent to more than 1,000 passenger cars off the road.

While Metro region contractors are recycling more than they ever have before, of the 250,000 tons (65,000 full drop boxes) that contractors are still throwing away, Metro estimates that about 60 percent of that material could have been recycled or reused.

Comments

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Since no one has asked, I'll ask it: how does this impact the existing facilities like the Rebuilding Center? Will this hurt efforts under way, or simply add more options and contribute to increased recycling of building materials?

One of the things I give Randy Rapaport credit for was having them come and deconstruct parts of the SE 26th & Clinton site. Will builders re-developing sites now pass on this option in favor of selling recyclables themselves? Sorta like people now selling on ebay things they otherwise might have donated to charity?

I would bet that the Rebuilding Center's (the place on Mississippi Av?) inventory represents but a minute percentage of the construction debris generated in the Metro area. Builders/developers might try selling salvage from demolition, but sounds like that would have involve a separate branch of their business requiring its own storage. They probably would just want to get a site prepped as quickly and efficiently as possible so they could move onto the construction phase.

There might be some overlap in materials between Metro's program and the Re-Building Center, but the nice thing that I see here is that Metro is only taking "commercial" goods. It seems the Re-B Center is mostly aimed toward the homeowner, while Metro may be serving another part of the recycled material market by stocking things like office partitions, commercial grade doors, frames, hardware, concrete formwork,etc.

Their site right now doesn't have much to list, but it DOES include a dock leveler, a boiler, a crane, electric motors, telephones, etc. You wouldn't see this sort of material at the Re-B Center.

I'd like to be clear that BoneyardNW.com is not trying to compete for the same materials or customers that one sees at the ReBuilding Center or Habitat For Humanity ReStore. These organizations have done a great job creating local markets for used building materials. Both organizations are welcome to use the BoneyardNW and Metro staff consulted with both organizations during the development of the web site.

While both of these stores take some limited types and quantities of commercial materials, the larger scale of most commercial projects would quickly overwhelm ANY size used building material retailer.
Think: 200 identical commercial doors. . . . While these doors have value, it is unlikely that the local used building material retailers would want to tie up the floor space needed for this product.

The BoneyardNW gets around the lack of available retail space by directly connecting the buyer and seller and letting them work out the terms of the "deal". One party saves on disposal, the other saves on material costs (or helps attain LEED M&R Reuse credits), the landfill goes on a diet - and the environment wins too.

I have been looking for some time for a good way to recycle product from our operation. We do granite slab countertops & have a mountain of sink cut outs, fall off & scrap. Is there any one out there that has a good use for this type of material?